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Food for Thought: Katie Learns About Gluten

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Is gluten good or evil? I’ve received a couple emails just in the past week from opposite sides of the court on this one, and it just demonstrates how controversial and confusing gluten can be — especially the fact that gluten intolerance, gluten sensitivity, and celiac disease seem to be on the rise.

The first asked me if it was a bad thing to add “vital wheat gluten” to whole wheat bread to make it softer. The author was tired of very dense whole wheat bread and had heard that adding gluten should help the rise.

Have you adapted any of your recipes to include other grains such as oatmeal and ground oat flour or corn meal in place of whole wheat flour?

I am looking forward to your response and possibly a new whole grain Kitchen Stewardship.

I have to realize that I can’t be everything to everyone, and I certainly am not here at KS to create recipes for all allergies and sensitivities under the sun.

Then again, if we end up figuring out that my husband is one of the millions walking around with an undiagnosed gluten sensitivity, I’m sure this reader will be happy to see some more gluten-free ideas floating around here!

What is Gluten?

Gluten is simply a protein found in wheat, barley and rye. It is what allows the elasticity of bread dough and thus the nice, fluffy rise we like in our bread products, and it also helps bread hold its shape and absorb liquids (Mmmm, soup and toast).

When you knead bread dough, it’s called developing the gluten. That is why my first reader rightfully wanted to add gluten to her bread, to get a nicer rise. It’s also one of the possible reasons so many people are having problems with gluten.

The Gluten Problem

For many people (I hesitate to say “most” anymore after the research for this post), gluten is simply another food. For an unknown number of folks, gluten causes their immune system to go into overdrive.

Celiac disease, a very serious true gluten allergy, affects an estimated 3 million Americans, many of whom don’t even know they have it. (EDIT: Thank you to many commenters who corrected my terminology: celiac disease is not an allergy but an autoimmune disease. The comments – all of them – are definitely worth a read on this post. I learned a lot more!) Celiacs should not have even a speck of wheat/gluten, or they become ill and have awful internal consequences that they might not even be able to feel until later. A study from a year ago in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that celiacs have a 39% increased risk of death, mainly from heart disease and cancer, than the average population.

In the last 50 years, incidence of celiac disease has increased 400%. That’s quadrupling. That’s intense. I always go right to the “we have better science and are diagnosing people more accurately nowadays” argument with stats like those. This study, however, was based on blood samples from 10,000 random people. All the celiacs in the cohort were undiagnosed. Ugh.

Even more frightening than the increased rate of celiac disease and increased chance of death is this: Many people who do not have celiac disease do have inflammation of the gut related to a gluten sensitivity manifesting itself in many ways. Those folks are 72% more likely to die. Try telling that to your husband as he worries he won’t be able to eat pizza and drink beer again.

It’s possible that one-third of the American population has a gluten sensitivity. Clearly most of us don’t even know it, or our pasta-consuming, sandwich-eating ways would have to change.

The problem with gluten doesn’t really hit the news, because gluten sensitivity manifests itself with many symptoms and causes other health issues. An article in the Huffington Post that was very eye-opening for me said:

A review paper in The New England Journal of Medicine listed 55 “diseases” that can be caused by eating gluten. These include osteoporosis, irritable bowel disease, inflammatory bowel disease, anemia, cancer, fatigue, canker sores, and rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis, and almost all other autoimmune diseases. Gluten is also linked to many psychiatric and neurological diseases, including anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, dementia, migraines, epilepsy, and neuropathy (nerve damage). It has also been linked to autism.

We used to think that gluten problems or celiac disease were confined to children who had diarrhea, weight loss, and failure to thrive. Now we know you can be old, fat, and constipated and still have celiac disease or gluten sensitivity.

Gluten sensitivity is actually an autoimmune disease that creates inflammation throughout the body, with wide-ranging effects across all organ systems including your brain, heart, joints, digestive tract, and more. It can be the single cause behind many different “diseases.” To correct these diseases, you need to treat the cause–which is often gluten sensitivity–not just the symptoms.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that ALL cases of depression or autoimmune disease or any of these other problems are caused by gluten in everyone–but it is important to look for it if you have any chronic illness.

Since my husband already has Crohn’s Disease, an autoimmune disease, and going grain-free pretty quickly healed his gut issues this fall, I am becoming more and more concerned that we’re going to have to change our wheat-loving habits around here. (So much for my “Seeking the Perfect Homemade Whole Wheat Bread” series! Actually, I still might give it a shot, but I’ll need to learn about some gluten-free options for poor hubs).

Why Does Gluten Make People Sick?

There are a couple reasons that gluten and humans don’t get along so well.

Wheat was introduced to the European diet (this is mostly a white person’s problem) in the Middle Ages, and a few hundred years isn’t really long enough to completely adapt to a new food.

About 30% of people of European descent carry the gene that makes them susceptible to celiac disease.

Gluten can cause and/or take advantage of existing leaky gut syndrome. When our bodies don’t completely digest the gluten protein, it can begin to sneak through the walls of our intestines and into the blood stream. The immune system, sensing an invader, puts out the “attack!” cry. Unfortunately, other proteins that our body does need are similar enough to the gluten protein, gliadin, that the immune system goes to work on them, too, causing breakdowns in organs, joints, and cells.I just shake my head to even think of all that going on, silently, in someone I love.If you’re interested in the topic, Balanced Bites has a great article on leaky gut and gluten from which I learned a lot. Saved me from having to write it myself! (Another helpful article on gluten sensitivity.)

Why is Gluten Intolerance more Prevalent?

That 400% increase is a striking number. No matter the genetic tendencies or the leaky guts, one has to ask what we have done differently in the past five decades or so to cause such an increase.

I know I’ve read this somewhere, but alas, I can’t find a source for the life of me (Help? Anyone?). There is a theory that everyone has a total gluten load that their bodies can handle in a lifetime, and when that is maxed out, you’re going to be sensitive to gluten if not totally intolerant or allergic. Many older adults are developing gluten intolerances nowadays, and that is one theory as to why.

If exposure to gluten causes gluten issues, here’s what we’ve done to encourage the problem:

Our new wheat: In our quest for lighter bread, the wheat we generally eat in America today has been hybridized to create a much higher gluten content than in centuries past. EDIT 3/2013: I just read the opposite, that modern wheat does NOT have more gluten, but yet it has had its protein structures altered in such ways that it impacts our digestion of wheat in general, which presents itself as a gluten intolerance. I can’t say I understand all the science, but you can read the short article HERE for yourself.

Food processing and gluten: Gluten is added to many things in the food processing industry and is one of the fake meat options for vegetarian fare.

The whole wheat bread phenomenon: The government’s push toward whole grain breads, although well-intended, has resulted in a whole generation of people eating extra gluten. Any whole wheat bread in the store, and many good whole wheat bread recipes, include additional gluten over and above that which is already in the wheat.One great breadstick recipe that I love because it goes from finding the recipe card to serving the breadsticks in under an hour and a half actually calls for 6 Tablespoons of additional gluten. That recipe makes me nervous now. How much extra gluten are we all consuming with this new trend?

Food Renegade posted on the rise of gluten intolerance a while back, quoting the Weston A Price Foundation’s Chris Masterjohn on some more systemic dietary possibilities for the cause of the massive increase in gluten intolerance today:

Some people may possess as-yet unidentified genes that cause their immune system to think an undigested fragment of the gluten protein looks like a microbial invader.

Some people who consume gluten may have dysbiosis — damaged gut flora — from antibiotic use or consuming foods that they cannot digest. Feeding infants grains before they are able to digest them may raise the risk of dysbiosis. In this scenario, the immune system may see the products of microbial invasion from the dysbiosis and the undigested gluten fragment at the same time and be tricked into thinking that the gluten fragment is the microbial invader.

Low-nutrient diets may interfere with the body’s ability to suppress immune cells that are capable of attacking harmless proteins. For example, one of the chemicals the body uses to suppress these immune cells is TGF-beta,c which is upregulated by vitamin A.d A diet deficient in vitamin A, then, might undermine the body’s ability to keep its immune system from attacking harmless proteins like gluten.

What do we do Now?

If you think you might have a gluten sensitivity, you can test yourself by eliminating ALL gluten from your life for 2-4 weeks (including lipsticks, soy sauce, shampoo, potentially contaminated oats, etc. Do your research.). If when you try gluten again you feel horrible, that’s a pretty clear answer. (These three diets all eliminate gluten and help heal the gut.)

If you’d like to simply take some precautions to help avoid developing a gluten issue, you can watch out for added gluten in your life. Some practical tips:

Eat fewer grains

Eat a wider variety of grains instead of just wheat: brown rice, millet, quinoa, oats, and a bunch of others that I don’t use because I’m…uh…kind of attached to wheat.

Avoid recipes that add gluten additionally.

Try spelt. Spelt is an ancient form of wheat that is lower in gluten. It seems a little sweeter to me, which is actually pretty awesome sometimes. Try these spelt biscuits (also in Healthy Snacks to Go).

Get going with sourdough. The fermentation process of sourdough begins to break down the gluten protein, enough so that some with gluten sensitivities can consume it, but not so much that it can’t give bread a nice rise. Here’s how to make a sourdough starter and the sourdough eCourse at GNOWFGLINS.

First, it is our mission to produce the finest sprouted flour available and to that end we are the only producers who tests each batch to assure that the grain has actually sprouted and not just soaked or drown. Soaking grain is better for you than unsoaked grain, but it does not produce the nutritional and digestible qualities of sprouted grain flour.

Second, we do not stone grind our flour for several sanitary reasons and the fact that stone milling breaks down the integrity of the grain which results in flour that produces dense baked goods.

And last, our flours are produced in the only certified organic sprouted flour mill rated Superior by the American Institute of Baking. Of the 90-some mills in the country, less than 10 are rated Superior.

When I told the company their complementary mention would be in this post, they wanted you to know:

On gluten, I want you to understand that Shiloh Farms is not a dedicated gluten-free facility but we go to great lengths to insure our products are not cross-contaminated in our facility. You can read our attached Clean Processing Policy to see how we deal with the fact that we are a small facility that handles wheat and nut products. All our packages contain an allergen statement, but we do not advertise or claim them to be gluten-free. Individuals who are extremely allergic to gluten need to exercise caution. We take this seriously as we have two individuals in our Shiloh Farms “family” that have Celiac disease. If a consumer wishes to simply limit or minimize intake of gluten, our naturally gluten-free products should be fine.

In a related matter, we have had a run on Shiloh Farms Tapioca Flour since it was mentioned in Silvana Nardone’s book on gluten and dairy free cooking: Cooking for Isaiah. As a matter of fact, we are currently out of stock and are rearranging our production schedule to package more.

If you love anecdotal evidence like I do, you’ll be amazed at what soaking, sprouting and souring grains did for Wardeh’s daughter’s gluten sensitivity in this story.

And if you really want to know if you have a gluten issue and hate the idea of an elimination diet, just get a blood test at your family doctor. My husband went that route today, so we’ll be waiting to see what it says! The good doctor also told him that if he does have a gluten allergy (they’re all allergies, according to doc, just varying degrees), eating gluten won’t shorten his life or harm him long-term, it will just make him feel badly. [Sounds like the blood test might not help since he’s been off gluten largely for 6 weeks…see comments.]

My evidence is to the contrary. That’s the beauty of a second opinion, says my husband. Any thoughts, O wise KS readers?

EDIT: a general blood test will NOT necessarily show if you have a gluten sensitivity. There are 17 proteins in wheat, and you could be sensitive to any one of them. The test only tests for the most common and skips the other 16. Do an elimination diet, my friends – if you feel better, you have learned something. Something very important. (My husband’s test came back negative, we decided the doctor knows zilch about food and health, and we learned through experience that he most definitely, 100%, has a gluten sensitivity.)

Disclosure: If you buy products through links on this page, it’s likely that I’ll get a commission. Shiloh Farms is a paid advertiser this month. See my full disclosure statement here.

About Katie Kimball @ Kitchen Stewardship

Katie Kimball is a trusted educator and author of 8 real food cookbooks. She is passionate about researching natural remedies and making healthy cooking easier for busy families. She’s been featured on media outlets like ABC, NBC and First for Women magazine as well as contributing regularly on the FOX Network. Over the last 10 years, Katie has spoken prolifically at conferences, online summits and podcasts and become a trusted authority and advocate for children’s health. Busy moms look to this certified educator for honest, in-depth natural product reviews and thorough research. She often partners with health experts and medical practitioners to deliver the most current information to the Kitchen Stewardship community. In 2016 she created the #1 bestselling online kids cooking course, Kids Cook Real Food, helping thousands of families around the world learn to cook. A mom of 4 kids from Michigan, she is a Stress Mastery Educator and member of the American Institute of Stress.

96 Bites of Conversation So Far

For those who still might be coming to this page, it’s important to note that the scientist who originally published the paper describing “gluten sensitivity” later retracted it, saying that he had made an error in the data analysis.

Yes, that means there is no such thing as gluten sensitivity. Celiac disease certainly exists and affects an extremely tiny portion of the population.

All those people out there buying gluten-free candies and the rest of that nonsense are merely falling victim to the marketing machine that takes advantage of their lack of information.

So, unless you’ve been diagnosed by a qualified MD has having Celiac, enjoy all the gluten you want. It’s a great healthful protein!

Thanks for the perspective, Peter, I wasn’t aware that the original paper was retracted. However – so, so many more health professionals have rung in with a great deal of evidence (including anecdotal, which isn’t to be rested upon as the only proof, but is certainly important to notice) about the severity and reality of gluten sensitivity. There are many people who are not Celiac but cannot feel well with gluten in their diets. Gluten-free candy, now, of course that’s nonsense. 🙂 But gluten sensitivity is as real as a person’s stomachache, and there are volumes written on it now. Thanks! Katie

I really, really would love to know if soaking my grains is taking care of the problem of the effects of hybridized wheat. Since all of our wheat is hybridized is there a solution to this problem or am I wasting my time? I’m getting incredibly frustrated after hearing about all the horrible affects of gluten. Thank you to anyone willing to help me out.

There are websites where you can get Einkorn and Emmer wheat (aka, the oldest known wheat varieties). These are basically the same as has been eaten for thousands of years. From what I understand, the next oldest variety of wheat is durum wheat, which has fewer chromosomes than bread wheat. Durum is certainly cheaper than the emmer or einkorn, so I would go with that.
Sprouting may indeed undo the effect hybridization has had on the gluten (couldn’t say for sure). The longer you sprout the wheat, the more the gluten structure changes.

Sarah,
Soaking or sprouting makes the grain more digestible, but it really doesn’t do anything remarkable to the effect gluten might have on you, I don’t think. At least it can’t “eradicate” it. Some people who have a hard time with wheat do well when it’s soaked. Others see no difference. Unfortunately the hybridization of wheat is at the cellular level (right?…) and soaking can’t really get “in” that deeply. I don’t know if that helps at all, but it’s a start…

Hybridization is a cellular level thing, but it’s also an entire organism thing. All hybridization is, is purposefully cross-pollinating two different plants. The result is a plant with a different genetic structure than either parent plant. Humans have been doing this since the beginning of agriculture (which is part of the reason the Paleo diet argument makes no sense: we can’t eat an ancestral diet, because almost no ancestral foods even exist anymore!)

There is a great video on youtube called The Truth About Gluten by Dr den Boer in Grand Rapids, MI
DBC Natural Health. I was very closed minded on this subject.. chalking the “gluten free” all up to just being a fad. Oh how wrong I was. Well worth listening to.

Hi Katie
I was just reading a few of the posts that point the finger at vaccines. As a newborn I couldnt tolerate formula milk, which I understand used to (and still does) contain wheat flour as a thickener. My mother was advised to feed me watered down evaporated milk which I could tolerate. At the time no one knew why I couldnt stomach the infant formula milk. 39 years later and after suffering my whole life with health problems my symptoms have all but disapeared after cutting gluten out of my diet. So I am not convinced vaccines was the cause of my intolerance because I was still in hospital when the symptoms started. Anyway, great site, its nice to know that I am not alone out there, fellow intolerees unite!

Please remember that I’m just a gal who reads a lot and spends way too much time in her kitchen. I’m not a doctor, nurse, scientist, or even a real chef, and certainly the FDA hasn't evaluated anything on this blog. Any products mentioned are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Please talk to your health professional (or at least your spouse) before doing anything you might think is questionable. Trust your own judgment…I can’t be liable for problems that occur from bad decisions you make based on content found here.

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